


Changing Duties

by devilinthedetails



Series: Hot Blood [3]
Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Duty, Gen, Scanran War, change
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:00:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25711735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: During the Scanran War, Zahir receives a change in his duties.
Series: Hot Blood [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1848427
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	Changing Duties

Changing Duties

General Vanget had summoned Zahir to his office at Northwatch. Zahir didn’t know why but suspected that he’d be enlightened soon. The general, blunt as a crag hammered by the winter winds of the far north, never beat around the bush. 

“Winter is ending.” General Vanget’s comment was belied by the looming gray clouds outside his window that promised more piles of heavy snow. “Soon the mountain roads will be passable for horses and wagons. We can expect reinforcements to arrive within weeks.” 

Zahir nodded. War with Scanra—waged in small raids and skirmishes all winter—was about to swell like a river surging with spring meltwater from the high northern mountains into large scale battles and sieges. Of course King Jonathan and Queen Thayet would be sending long trains of knights and soldiers to fortify the Scanran border. 

“Another year the arrival of reinforcements might have meant you could travel south on leave and get some rest.” General Vanget’s fingers steepled as Zahir reflected on how strange the words echoed in his ears. 

To him, the south didn’t mean the chaos and politics of Corus. It meant the freedom of the Great Southern Desert where he could ride his horse for miles against the wind before coming to a cool blue oasis where he and his mare could drink deeply from the refreshing, life-sustaining water. When he ran his horse so fast—faster even then the wind, it felt—his body and soul flew like the hooves of his mare, and even the heat of the sun couldn’t touch him. 

He hadn’t been south—hadn’t been home—for years. Not since the Royal Progress had taken him there. Duty since then had carried him like a grain of sand in a storm elsewhere. Duty had made him an exile. 

Rest was an even more distant, hazy concept. Soldiers and knights in the north didn’t rest. They fought the Scanrans. They patrolled for raiders. They stood sentry as assigned at night and only caught a few stray winks between shifts on guard. Never being able to rest—-always being prepared, with tense muscles even in fitful dreams, to fight the enemy that could attack unforeseen at any moment-- was what it meant to be a warrior this far north. 

“Such rest,” General Vanget continued, “is impossible for me to offer you this spring, but I can offer you a change in duties, and a change in duties is as good as a rest with a war going on.” 

After months serving along the Scanran border, Zahir was accustomed to the weary, threadbare functionality of expressions that ended with unneeded reminders that a war was going on. Fresh food was unavailable and rations limited because there was a war going on. Requisitions for vital supplies were slow to come or never arrived at all because there was a war going on. The simple statement that there was a war going on was supposed to be a call to endurance—an appeal to grit one’s teeth and bear anything that happened without complaint because there was a war going on as nobody with eyes and ears could have failed to miss. 

“Yes, there’s a war going on.” Zahir smiled slightly, knowing the role and reply expected of him and sliding smoothly into it as if it were a comforting, warming bath. “What change of duties, sir?” 

“His Majesty has written me that the Crown Prince will be coming north to aid the war effort this spring.” General Vanget’s jaw was tight as a clenched fist. “That means we’ll need knights assigned to constantly guard him. You’ll be such a knight. You’ve experience protecting and serving the royal family, after all.” 

“I’ve experience protecting and serving the father.” Zahir inclined his head. It had been his duty to serve and protect his king that had taken him to the Scanran border. Not in the vague sense of most of his fellow soldiers and knights. In a profoundly personal fashion. He’d knelt in a tent as the Royal Progress wound to a finish in the north—after the king and queen had reports of strange happenings and had their investigations harshly rebuffed by the general sitting stonily before Zahir now. 

Back in that candlelit tent, King Jonathan had asked Zahir to be his trusted eyes and ears on the Scanran border. Zahir, overcome by loyalty to the majesty of this man, had agreed. The king had rewarded his devotion with a dazzling smile like sunlight shining on white snow. He had rested his hand on Zahir’s head, fingers gently curling Zahir’s dark hair, and murmured a benediction almost as a father might have. 

Remembering with a scratchiness in his throat the king he had written reports and letters to whenever the snows permitted a courier to pass along the rough mountain roads, Zahir added, “The father is not the son, however.” 

Zahir knew King Jonathan as his blood knew his bones, but Prince Roald was different. Even after years training alongside Roald, Zahir felt as if he had only a surface, skin-deep knowledge of Tortall’s Crown Prince. He didn’t think anyone knew the heir to the throne beyond mere polite pleasantries. 

“The son is said to be less hot-blooded and forceful than the father.” General Vanget shrugged, and Zahir swallowed a snort that a general who had shouted at his king—an offense that could’ve gotten a general beheaded in a more volatile land or under a more temperamental king—would accuse King Jonathan of being hot-blooded. “If you can manage the father, you can handle the son, I assume.” 

“The son is stubborn in his own way, I believe.” Zahir recalled how icily insistent Prince Roald had once been in the pages’ wing that the Midwinter pranks orchestrated by Joren that were warning them all extra lessons with Master Oakbridge must stop. 

“That may not be a bad thing.” General Vanget grunted. “Only the stubborn survive the north, after all.” 

Those from Tortall’s far north, Zahir had discovered in his time along the border, took as much perverse pride in surviving the brutal northern winters as Bazhir did in enduring the merciless aridity of the endless southern desert. Still, Zahir wondered if the secret to their survival wasn’t stubbornness so much as it was being changeable as the restless winds that tore through the northern mountains and the Great Southern Desert alike, uniting their peoples in ways they couldn’t understand or articulate.


End file.
